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Abstract

work well for them. Moreover, some might have been conditioned by the idea that if a student could not perform well within a system that had worked for them, the problem lay with the student rather than the system.</p><p id="7a58">Although there is now a better understanding of learning disabilities, that understanding does not translate into the entirety of the education industry, with still too few schools and colleges catering to those who learn differently. Even then, those with mild learning disabilities or who are wired to learn differently could still fall off the curb.</p><p id="7024">In other words, if you are not the kind to learn well by rote or abstract reasoning, or if you are the kind to get distracted too easily not just by external stimulus but by over-obsession with details that others might skip over easily, then the conventional form of teaching, learning, and assessment will usually indicate that you are an under-performer.</p><p id="27bf">For instance, if you are very proficient with practical, artistic, and mechanical skills but fail to grasp mathematics and abstract sciences in the ways they were usually taught, the school authorities might think you are a better fit for vocational training than the academic route.</p><p id="3142">While this might appear to be empowering at a glance, it is actually another form of disempowerment. By convincing you that your talents can only lie in particular areas and that you should not even try to go that other route if you fail, the educational establishment need not expand its resources to diversify teaching and learning.</p><p id="5976">In other words, if you are good with words or art but perpetually fail school math, you should not even think about becoming a mathematician and engineer. The inverse is true — you may love to draw but find that you do not possess the supposed ‘natural’ aptitude that talented artists are supposed to have, so you think the world of art and all it entails might be the wrong choice for you.</p><p id="e405">Some learned belatedly as adults that what they thought they could never be good enough for was complete hogwash, as documented in the work of <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674034648">David Edwards</a> and <a href="https://barbaraoakley.com/books/learning-how-to-learn/">Barbara Oakley</a>, but these are the minorities and largely from the more elite sections of society. For many, they would feel that there is no turning back.</p><h1 id="0b70">3. Is there anything that you can do about this?</h1><figure id="d490"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/0*1H-22aqKtWronQRi"><figcaption>Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@hillary_jeanne?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral">Hillary Ungson</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral">Unsplash</a></figcaption></figure><p id="7616">That depends on your willingness and where you are at in life. For those still within the K-12 system (or if you are parents of children of K-12 students facing some of the issues I have mentioned), here are some workarounds that I wished I knew as a student and which I know very well as a college teacher.</p><h2 id="bd6c">A. Teachers are very human with their own biases, prejudices, and blind spots.</h2><p id="b0b7">But this does not mean that you cannot make full use of what they have to offer. You begin by asking questions, and lots of them. A lesson I learned from teaching very young children is how they are not afraid to ask questions or sound stupid, and this self-confidence appears to depreciate the older they get as learning traumas accumulate.</p><p id="1300">In school or college, you may find that certain subjects come more easily to you than others, and usually, that means that how the subject is or was taught to you resonates more with how you are wired.</p><p id="8f29">Find out if you could apply some of the same methods that have worked well for you in these other subjects to subjects that are your weak points. Don’t try to do this all alone — talk to your teachers or principal if possible. If you find the teacher to be less than helpful, try to look around for other potential resources for help (the Internet could be helpful if you look the right way).</p><h2 id="eca2">B. Try thinking about the subjects you hate in the same way that you think about the topics you love.</h2><p id="10e5">Although I was a science student and even became a science major in college, I actually found the formal learning of science exceedingly hardgoing and uninspiring, so my formal education in science saw me with mixed grades. For the longest time, I did not understand why what made sense to others was so confusing to me.</p><p id="3e71">Although I love the big ideas science carries, I could not make myself care about their mundane details. It was not

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until I started studying literature formally (which was the beginning of my entry into other humanistic studies), that I finally realized how naive and wrong-headed I had been about learning.</p><p id="d33f">I took to studying literature easily, because a young love for stories had already wired my brain to look into multiple layers of meaning within a text, finding intentions in the interactions among characters, and even to see how events, both the tangible and abstract, could be connected to each other.</p><p id="6c31">As a highschooler and, later, college student, I mistakenly thought that science was not like that when that was never the case. Those who did well intuitively understood the importance of finding your own resonance with the material you are learning rather than using another person’s approach.</p><p id="8ef3">Many years after that realization, I ran a <a href="https://www.epicurusartsci.com/news-and-announcement">project</a> teaching STEM educators the importance of awakening the imagination of their students, not by imposing a specific way of thinking on the students, but by allowing the students to form and then examine the narratives they have formed about the topics they are learning in a way that is fitting with their experience and level of knowledge.</p><p id="4c9f">That project was inspired by earlier projects relating to artscience learning I had subsequently written up and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358954493_Channelling_Artscience_Through_Fan-Fiction_for_Diversifying_STEM_Approaches_in_Participatory_Learning_in_Malaysia">published</a>. All of these projects were my own adult exploration of the what-ifs of learning if I could relive the life of a youthful learner.</p><h2 id="5e8d">C. Struggling makes you a better person.</h2><p id="04b3">As a college teacher, I had taken a continuing course on college teaching with a math professor from another institution. She told the participants of the course that math did not come easily to her despite being a math educator today and that she had struggled hard as a student.</p><p id="c70f">However, it was this struggle that made her an empathetic teacher and more determined to find ways to make math work even for the most math-phobic student (as an aside, math phobia can have a terrible consequence on your life, especially in how you manage your finances regardless of how successful you might be otherwise).</p><p id="39e8">Many Nobel Prize winners <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/nobel-chemistry-winner-failed-the-first-college-chemistry-exam-101696437940956.html">struggled through failures</a> before they became the success everybody wanted to emulate. Entrepreneurs live with daily <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/11/why-failure-is-important-for-entrepreneurs-lessons-from-9-founders/">failures</a>, big and small.</p><p id="e2aa">If you have failed before, your ability to take calculated risks and tolerance for discomfort goes up. I came from an education system that punishes failure rather than uses it as a learning opportunity.</p><p id="48dc">Hence, it is not uncommon for those coming from such educational programming to associate anxiety with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/occams-corner/2016/jan/04/academic-anxiety-dreams-what-they-mean-jenny-rohn">dreams of taking an exam</a> while feeling thoroughly unprepared. As an educator, it became necessary to revisit that painful past so that I could develop more empathy toward my students.</p><p id="f41f">As an entrepreneur with empathy, you can create more meaningful products and meaningful work for your employees. If you are an adult today and have always had problems with a subject or in learning a particular skill due to the way you were taught, now you are in a sufficiently safe space to try again without needing to compete with another person.</p><p id="9403">I did that myself when I decided to enroll in courses on Coursera during the pandemic lockdown to work on subjects I used to have difficulties with. Without even caring about the outcome, confronting the fear left an impalpable sense of accomplishment.</p><p id="d914">Thank you for reading my story.</p><div id="af97" class="link-block"> <a href="https://medium.com/@normasalim/subscribe"> <div> <div> <h2>Get an email whenever Clarissa Ai Ling Lee, PhD publishes.</h2> <div><h3>Get an email whenever Clarissa Ai Ling Lee, PhD publishes. By signing up, you will create a Medium account if you don't…</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/0*Ikcee5gQpM1TlOFG)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div></article></body>

5 Ways How We Got Wellness Wrong

We turned wellness into a consumeristic parade of selling high-end brands in the name of healthy.

Photo by CRYSTALWEED cannabis on Unsplash

In today’s world of quick fixes and technology, it is easy to get lost in a sea of information overload. We often turn to pills and supplements because we think they will help us stay healthy and fit.

Suddenly, everyone wants to have personalized health on their wrist. Instead of listening and caring for your body, the AI gadget will tell you what to do.

The rise of the wellness industry has been an amazing thing. We want to feel good about ourselves. We want to be happy and healthy from within.

I get it!

But the market quickly becomes a circus where everyone is a clown and the ringmaster becomes a fluffed CEO with endless bank accounts.

Wellness has become a popular buzzword in recent years.

It’s everywhere.

Here are five facts that show how wellness has gone wrong. I know, I am not alone when saying it, and it should be about more than just marketing buzzwords or selling products.

It’s time to get wellness right again.

We’ve created a business out of self-love, health, and mental health.

It’s the new black gold and we’re selling it everywhere.

We do not know what wellness is anymore, now it’s just a bunch of product names with self-help phrases printed on them.

It makes me wonder how much money you actually need to start a wellness business?

Wellness has become an industry where everyone is trying to fool the consumer with some new faddy product. We don’t know what it is, but we want it all the same!

We all know that AI is closer than we think, but with wellness, who cares?

We’ve become a society focused on selling products instead of educating people about health.

Toxic ingredients are hidden in products claiming to be natural or organic

Popping supplements won’t make you healthier or well, quite, on the contrary, they may make you ill. They are chemically made in the factories, and they aren’t properly researched. GNC stores won’t save you. Only nature can do it.

The rise of ‘wellness standards’ that value identity over physical well-being

Most people think wellness is about how many pills you take or the techno-gadgets that keep track of your heart rate or blood pressure. This could not be further from the truth.

The future of health is digital. And that is the major trend in wellness, today.

We know digital and technocracy is killing our souls, bodies, but we still promote it. It is so detrimental not only to our physical health but mental, too.

Way too many weird wellness trends

Jade eggs… women are putting jade eggs in their vaginas, #wellness

The question is whether it’s possible to make wellness cool again? Can wellness be about more than just marketing buzzwords and selling products?

I think so.

We’re not practicing what we preach in the Wellness industry

“Do you really think that a Fitbit is going to prevent heart disease? Or an electronic bracelet will keep your blood pressure in check?

Think again.

These techno-gadgets have been sold to us as the answer to every health problem, but they are not.

In fact, many of the supplements and gadgets that are being sold to us as health solutions can actually work against us.

If you are sick and tired of being sick and tired, it’s time to get off the pill-popping, latte-sipping, sugar-free, protein shakes consuming train that is leading us all to an early grave.

Let’s take wellness back to basics. To what it was always about. And that is wellbeing.

So how do we do this?

If you want to be healthy, eat more veggies and fruits, run barefoot, sleep well and live a simple life. The strength comes from within. Everything else is just a showoff.

~Unknown

Start by changing your lifestyle into a healthy one — free from brain-damaging foods, toxic chemicals, and sedentary lives.

Our ancestors worked all day in the scorching sun, had very little food and they still were healthy. It was not because of a magic pill or a few supplements — it was because their lifestyle was simple… Healthy living in today’s world doesn’t have to be complicated.

Wellness makes sense, but most people turn to pills or supplements because it seems more efficient than taking the time to cook at home and exercise.

But as you know, for most health problems, there is little evidence of the effectiveness of techno-gadgets or pills.

We have been sold a lie and we need to wake up to the truth, which is that it is simple lifestyle changes that will lead us to a better quality of life.

I am not saying there are no good supplements out there. There are some, but you need to read the evidence before you decide if they are worth it or not.

And most supplements don’t work because most of them have never been properly studied.

Everywhere I go, there’s a new app that claims to “revolutionize healthcare.”

I am very cynical about this, at least in the technological industries.

At the moment, the world should demand less of technological solutions and more fundamental, down-to-earth, person-to-person solutions.

Artificial intelligence wellness applications are the new basement treadmills that have been or will be converted into clothes racks.

Everything represents how far the business of technology has gone off track.

They’re devoted to false ideologies! They only see profits.

They’re trapped in invisible fanaticism that has robbed them of their intellect and their humanity!

They no longer see individuals as they did before, even themselves — as having hurdles, ambitions, and everything that makes us human!

They’re not looking for a company’s long-term sustainability, humanism, or critical thinking; they just want balance sheets: profits!

The goal of this wellness initiative is to develop, market, and invest in technologies that allow individuals to be fully “humanized”.

Being human, however, isn’t a thing to be improved upon.

It’s enough just to be human.

We only need to look after ourselves and one another. It isn’t more difficult than that, believe me.

The solution to living a healthy life is straightforward, but it needs your participation.

And before you can even fix your health problem, it is good to understand how we got wellness wrong and how to fix it.

Fortunately for you, I have the best research explaining easily how to fix it with a simple lifestyle. Read my article about grandma.

My Grandma’s 13 Uncommon (Healthy) Habits For A Longer Life

My grandma lived to be 95 years old. She outlasted all of her nine siblings. Here are her proven habits for longevity…

medium.com

I understand that you may question whether I’m kidding. But if you follow in my grandma’s footsteps, you’ll be far healthier than with any technology or weird drinks.

It is also cost-free.

No money required!